The present invention relates to a semiconductor production system and more particularly to a semiconductor production system linking a semiconductor manufacturing apparatus, an inspection apparatus and a storage device by using a storage area network.
A commonly used communication means for interconnecting apparatus is a LAN (local area network) described, for example, in Japanese Patent Unexamined Publication No. 2000-164667. Another system is also known which, as disclosed in Japanese Patent Unexamined Publication No. 9-153441 (corresponding to U.S. Pat. No. 5,867,389), divides a LAN into a plurality of segments and installs a processing station between the divided segments to copy data.
The storage area network is an independent network which is constructed of only storages, devices for storing data, by separating the storages from a server. Examples of such storage area networks include those networks based on such links as a fiber channel (one of serial interface standards) described in WO 00/18049 and WO 00/17769 and an optical fiber described in WO 00/29954. The storage area network is a general term for networks that link storage devices independently of the kind of communication devices used. A link of storage devices through a serial bus as defined in IEEE1394 and a link of storage devices through a switched bus as defined by InfiniBand (registered trade name) are storage area networks. However, Ethernet which handles storage protocol, such as iSCSI (registered trade name) and SEP (SCSI Encapsulation Protocol), is the storage area networks.